The manipulations affected customers all around the world, for over a decade. Effects Īs of December 2014, the monetary losses caused by manipulation of the forex market were estimated to represent $11.5 billion per year for Britain’s 20.7 million pension holders alone (£7.5B/year).
Reuters reported hundreds of traders around the world could be implicated in the scandal.
Citigroup had also fired its head of European spot foreign exchange trading, Rohan Ramchandani. Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds, RBS, Standard Chartered, UBS and the Bank of England as of June 2014 had suspended, placed on leave, or fired some 40 forex employees. Deutsche Bank, continental Europe’s largest lender, was also cooperating with requests for information from regulators. Barclays, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase all suspended or placed on leave senior currency traders. Īt least 15 banks including Barclays, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs disclosed investigations by regulators. Two of these senior traders, Richard Usher and Rohan Ramchandani, were members of the 13-member Bank of England Joint Standing Committee's chief dealers group. Among The Cartel's members were Richard Usher, a former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) senior trader who went to JPMorgan as head of spot foreign exchange trading in 2010, Rohan Ramchandani, Citigroup’s head of European spot trading, Matt Gardiner, who joined Standard Chartered after working at UBS and Barclays, and Chris Ashton, head of voice spot trading at Barclays. The chatroom was used by some of the most influential traders in London and membership in the chatroom was highly sought after. Regulators were particularly focusing in on one small exclusive chatroom which was variously called The Cartel or The Mafia.
The discussions in the chatrooms were interspersed with jokes about manipulating the forex market and repeated references to alcohol, drugs, and women. The chatrooms had names such as "The Cartel", "The Bandits’ Club", "One Team, One Dream" and "The Mafia". Citibank trader, on a prospective new member to the cartel chatroom Īt the center of the investigation were the transcripts of electronic chatrooms in which senior currency traders discussed with their competitors at other banks the types and volume of the trades they planned to place. Don't want other numpty's in mkt to know, but not only that is he gonna protect us like we protect each other.